Abstract:
A comprehensive understanding and scientific assessment of radionuclides migration are of great significance for nuclear environmental safety assessment and for the design of effective removal and remediation strategies for radioactive contaminated sites. The presence of environmental colloids can affect the migration behavior of radionuclides. It is generally believed that the migration of radioactive nuclides in the environment is carried out in the form of solutes, and the main processes of migration are diffusion and adsorption. They can also undergo complex physical and chemical interactions with natural mineral components such as clay minerals and biological media such as microorganisms, thereby slowing down or even blocking their further migration and diffusion in the natural environment. However, the presence of various colloids in the environment, especially clay mineral-biocomposite colloids, complicates the prediction and analysis of radionuclide migration. The research on the interaction mechanism and migration behavior of these environmental composite colloids and radionuclides will become more complicated. Thus, effectively controlling and preventing the migration of radionuclides in the environment and predicting their potential hazards are an urgent task. This review summarizes the migration behavior of colloids and radionuclides, discusses the main factors affecting the migration of colloids, and examines the mechanism affecting the migration behavior of colloids and radionuclides. Furthermore, the detection means and analytical methods were explained. The results show the migration behavior of environmental colloids such as clay minerals and biological colloids with radioactive nuclides in porous media is influenced by the physical and chemical factors such as pH, ion strength and valence state, organic matter, and microorganisms. Colloidal aggregation, deposition, and release occur during the transport of colloidal loaded nuclides, which are regulated by multiple mechanisms including convection-diffusion, adsorption-desorption, aggregation, straining, blocking, and ripening. Under laboratory conditions, the interaction mechanism between colloids and nuclides is mainly studied by using aggregation kinetics experiments, static adsorption batch experiments, column migration experiments, and advanced spectroscopic characterization methods such as transmission electron microscopy(TEM), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy(FTIR), and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy(TRLFS), etc. In the real natural environment, there are not only a wide variety of clay minerals and biological colloids such as bacteria, but also a large number of complex system ions such as carbonate, phosphate, sulfate, and silicate, which have synergistic and antagonistic effects. These can cause changes in the fate of radioactive pollutants and pose potential threats to nuclear environmental safety. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on the interaction and migration behavior of various environmental colloids and radioactive nuclides with different compositions and ratios, as well as their environmental fate in future research.